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The discourse of the war on terrorism cannot be understood without the
context in which it emerged. A series of power relations of specific groups
of people with similar ideologies have converged in a point in time allowing
the apparition of this specific discourse. This is not a cause and effect
relationship; rather a network of power has made this discourse possible.
Not one of these agents or groups is solely responsible for it, much less
for its consequences, but all have had a part to play. This chapter traces
such a network.

It will be noted that in the examination that follows, the current
president of the United States, George W. Bush, is not mentioned as
often as other less known characters. One of the reasons is that Bush
was new to foreign policy when he became president in 2000, and as he
has insisted himself, his decisions have been nurtured by a group of
advisers with a long experience in the subject, both in the academy
and policy making.[1] Another one is that it is possible to identify
the influence that the men and women holding positions of power have
had, to such an extent that Bush’s words and actions have followed
previous documents prepared by these people almost exactly.

Neoconservatism

It is widely believed that a specific group of influence known as neoconservatism
has had an enormous influence on the war on terror. Even self-proclaimed
conservatives, such as Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke judge that
the current brand of US policy against terrorism that allowed the war
on Iraq "closely reflected the established neo-conservative position
and neo-conservative interventions in the policy process." [2]

The most appropriate way to view neoconservatism is as a "special interest"
or "faction". Special interests are associations "representing the interests
of their members to secure for themselves a privileged seat at the national
decision-making table". MIT professor Gene Grossman defines them as
"any minority group of voters that shares identifiable characteristics
and similar concerns".[3] The neoconservative faction consists of intellectuals
and elitists who tend to be of Jewish or Catholic background, many of
whom seem to have lapsed to secular humanism.[4] The group has also
been identified as "unipolarism", "democratic globalism", "neo-Manifest
Destinarianism", "neo-imperialism", "Pax Americanism", "neo-Reaganism",
and "liberal imperialism".[5]

This special interest includes individuals who hold or have held positions
in government, such as Chief of Staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney,
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, until his resignation in late 2005 after the
investigation on the Valerie Plame affair resulted in charges against
him; Special Advisor to President Bush, Elliott Abrams; Deputy Secretary
of Defence with the Bush Administration, Paul D. Wolfowitz, later appointed
head of the World Bank; and State Department officials John R. Bolton,
later appointed US ambassador the UN, and David Wurmser. On governmental
advisory bodies Eliot A. Cohen occupies a position on the Defence Policy
Board, a position that was also held by Richard Perle until recently.

Perhaps most important are Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, who would be better described as American nationalists
than as neoconservatives, but whose careers and views, such as those
concerning American exceptionalism and unilateralism, have run closely
to those of neoconservatism. Both their signatures can be found on a
key neoconservative document, the 1997 Statement of Principles by the
Project for the New American Century.

Neoconservatives can also be found in the academy: for example Yale
professor Donald Kagan, Princeton professors Bernard Lewis and Aaron
Friedberg; in the media: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol,
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and most foreign
policy editorialists on the Wall Street Journal and the Fox News
Channel; in business: former CIA Director James Woolsey; and in research
institutions: Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations, Norman Podhoretz
and Meyrav Wursmer at the Hudson Institute, any member of the Project
for the New American Century, and most foreign or Defence studies scholars
at the American Enterprise Institute.[6] This list is not all inclusive,
but it should serve to illustrate the range of positions held by neoconservatives.

An Introduction to Neoconservative Ideology

Neoconservatives have a tendency to see or depict the world of international
politics in black and white: a struggle between good and evil. It is
a doctrine specifically about the relation between Moscow and Washington
in the late twentieth century,[7] and between the United States as the
centre of democratic societies and rogue nations in the early twenty-first.

According to neoconservative Irving Kristol, there is no set of neoconservative
beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived
from historical experience that can be summarized in four "theses":
first, patriotism should be encouraged; second, international institutions
should be regarded "with the deepest suspicion"; third, statesmen should
make a clear distinction between friends and enemies, since it was a
mistake for some to not count the Soviet Union as an enemy; and finally,
for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical
term, but also an ideological one. Therefore,

Barring extraordinary events, the United States will
always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under
attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why
it was in our national interest to come to the defence of France and
Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend
Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical
calculations of national interest are necessary.[8]

This Wilsonian notion of the spread of democracy is not pure idealism;
it is also based on the supposition that if democracy and the rule of
law are established in troubled countries around the world, they will
cease to be threats. The promotion of democracy is not left to economic
development and political engagement; if necessary, it is provided through
military force. Some think-tank "fundamentalists" - as G. John Ikenberry
identifies them - such as Tom Donnelly and Max Boot, go even further
and argue for formal quasi-imperial control over strategically
valuable failed states, backed up by new American bases and an imperial
civil service.[9]

We could add to those theses the following common themes: a belief
that the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil
and that the former (themselves) should have the political character
to confront the latter; a willingness to use military power; and a primary
focus on the Middle East and global Islam as the principal theatre for
American overseas interests.

In putting their ideas into practice, neoconservatives analyze international
issues in absolute moral categories; focus on the "unipolar" power of
the United States, seeing the use of force as the first, not the
last option of foreign policy; disdain conventional diplomatic agencies
such as the State Department and conventional country-specific, realist,
and pragmatic analysis; and are hostile toward nonmilitary multilateral
institutions and instinctively antagonistic toward international treaties
and agreements.[10] If there is any good to multilateralism it is as
a tool of American power. As Robert Kagan has famously put it, "multilateralism
is a weapon of the weak". Or in Max Boot’s words: "Power breeds unilateralism.
It is as simple as that".[11]

Based on the above beliefs and approaches neoconservatives tend to
find themselves in confrontational postures with the Muslim world, with
some U.S.' allies, with the need for cooperation in the United Nations,
and with those within their country who disagree with them and their
objectives.[12]

Emphasis on Military Might and US exceptionalism

Robert Kagan and William Kristol’s book of 2000, Present Dangers:
Crisis and Opportunities in American Foreign and Defence Policy,
which includes a wide range of contributions from fellow neoconservatives,
provides something close to their canon. Kagan and Kristol speak of
establishing the "standard of a global superpower that intends to
shape the international environment to its own advantage," and decry
a narrow definition of America's "vital interests" arguing that "America's
moral purposes and national interests are identical."[13]

Their introductory chapter proposes to create a strong America capable
of projecting force quickly and with devastating effect on important
regions of the world. [An America which would act] as if instability
in important regions of the world, and the flouting of civilised rules
of conduct in those regions, were threats that affected us with almost
the same immediacy, [and which] conceives of itself as at once a European
power, an Asian power, a Middle Eastern power and, of course, a Western
Hemisphere power.

A principal aim of American foreign policy should be to bring about
a change of regime in hostile nations - in Baghdad and Belgrade, in
Pyongyang and Beijing and wherever tyrannical governments acquire the
military power to threaten their neighbours, our allies and the United
States.

[W]hen it comes to dealing with tyrannical regimes...
the United States should seek not coexistence but transformation.[14]

It is easy to identify this projection of neoconservative global intent
as a blueprint for what was to become later known as the Bush Doctrine.[15]

The unipolarists emphasize that the United States is not like other
nations but also maintain that other nations should be more like it,
without a doubt supported in the long imagined idea that their country
is an exception to history.[16] In turn, exceptionalism supports
the argument that military power must be returned to the centre of American
foreign policy. For early neoconservatives of the 1970s, foreign
policy in the post-Vietnam era had become too liberal and soft, and
unwilling to confront Soviet expansionism. Years later they argued that
during the Clinton era the United States was not taken seriously as
a global military power because of his reluctance to use real force
in Iraq; and when enemies stop fearing the United States, they are emboldened
to strike.[17]

Their promotion of force has also a certain degree of admiration and
fascination with the capabilities of the U.S. military, as Irving Kristol’s
words reveal:

Behind all [the neoconservative convictions about
foreign policy there] is a fact: the incredible military superiority
of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world,
in any imaginable combination. [...] With power come responsibilities,
whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that
if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities
to use it, or the world will discover them for you.[18]

Max Boot looks forward to a new era when The United States,
like the British Empire, will always be fighting some war, somewhere
in the globe. Likewise, Professor Eliot Cohen of the Defence Policy
Board and former CIA Director James Woolsey have suggested that the
United States is now "on the march" in "World War IV". It should come
as no surprise, then, that for neoconservatives, the applicability of
force is the default measure against terrorism. David Frum and Richard
Perle's book An End to Evil, sets out at full length the remedy
for terror and tyranny that underlies the Bush foreign policy: using
military force to overthrow noncooperative governments in troubled areas.[19]

The Middle East and Israel

Both Kagan and Kristol’s book and Frum and Perle’s are mostly dedicated
to the Middle East, the need for a strong military and Islamic-inspired
terrorism as the only foreign policy challenge to the United States.
Similarly, scholars at the Project for the New American Century pour
most of their energies into the Middle East and members of Americans
for Victory over Terrorism do so completely.

Their views are very specific and tend to be hostile towards the peace
process and Islam.

Since the 1970s, neoconservative publications have focused on defence
of U.S. policies concerning Israel. For example, the neoconservative
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs was established following
the 1973 Yom Kippur War, "partially at the prompting of the Pentagon
for a counterbalance to liberal sniping at Defence spending." Podhoretz
provided a pro-Israeli voice in what many neoconservatives of the time
thought of as an intellectual community lacking in support for Israel
as the only genuine democracy in the Middle East. He also maintained
that anti-Zionism was simply a mask of anti-Semitism and that it was
often found among anti-Americans and radicals. Thus, commitment to Israel's
security and right to exist and a patriotic support of U.S. values were
inextricably linked for many neoconservatives.

During the Cold War, intellectuals such as Midge Decter, Moynihan,
and Podhoretz argued that the U.N., Communism, and much of the Third
World was anti-Semitic, along with large portions of the U.S.
intellectual community; therefore the United States and Israel shared
a common ideological struggle against common enemies.[20]

The historical neoconservative commitment to Israel has been so pronounced
that even traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk have charged them
with mistaking "Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States". Similarly,
Patrick Buchanan, who had been sceptical of the need for war with Iraq
and challenged George Bush for the 1992 Republican presidential nomination,
commented that neoconservative "tactics - including the smearing of
opponents as racists, nativists, fascists, and anti-Semites - left many
conservatives wondering if we hadn't made a terrible mistake when we
brought these ideological vagrants in off the street and gave them a
place by the fire." These comments sparked a debate over whether or
not Buchanan was anti-Semitic.[21]

Philosophical and ideological origins

Leo Strauss

If we only read the above summary of neoconservative ideas we would
be excused to believe with John Samples that neoconservatism has been
"as much about politics as principles. ...They believed that the striving
for national greatness would appeal to American idealism and create
a new Republican majority."[22] Even if we do not accept those ideals,
we would be forced to conclude that it is a form of idealism, and indeed,
several commentators do so. Nonetheless, at least one interpretation
of the philosophical origins of neoconservatism, which I believe to
be more accurate, tells a rather different story - one which happens
to disclose the will to power underneath the will to truth that
Foucault wrote about.

While some political analysts think of the University of Chicago professor
Leo Strauss as the intellectual inspiration for neoconservatives (some
studied with him or with lecturers that followed his ideas in the 1960s),
others claim that his influence is exaggerated and that there is no
direct link between him and positions of power in Washington.[23] Modern
neoconservatives generally write in good terms about Strauss, but they
also deny that they owe any debt to him, and some even say they are
not familiar with his work.

However, while his importance may indeed be overstated, it is a fact
that his perspectives closely resemble those of neoconservatives, and
so we would be committing a mistake by dismissing him altogether. This
is not to suggest that all neoconservatives are following Strauss, but
to recognize that some influential neoconservatives in, and with links
to, the Bush administration, have fundamental connections to Straussianism
in their published works, statements, attitudes and policy perspectives.[24]

Strauss used classical texts - not only the Greek, but also Christian,
Jewish, and Muslim sacred writings - to comment on modern tyrannies,
which he thought were the product of modernity's rejection of the values
of classical societies that were hierarchically ordered and supported
in religiosity. Strauss believed democracy could not enforce its own
paradigm if it could not confront tyranny, which he believed was inherently
expansionist. He argued that the European emphasis on human reason deriving
from the Enlightenment represented a decline in religion-based values
and not an advance, deploring a secular political order for its "movement
away from the recognition of a superhuman authority - whether of revelation
based on Divine will or a natural order - to a recognition of the exclusively
human based authority of the State."[25]

Such a position reveals a concern for principles and would suggest
a form of idealism. Nevertheless, the significance of these values may
be exclusively pragmatic - even nihilistic. Jim George argues that to
the emphasis on national and cultural unity and the simple religious
and philosophical morality, we would have to add, as part of Strauss’s
legacy to neoconservatism, a "war culture" as the basis for that unity,
along with the notion that "elite rule is crucial" and the belief that
"the neoconservative elite has the right and indeed the obligation
to lie to the masses in order that the 'right' political and strategic
decisions be made and implemented. Hence, the use of the so-called 'noble
lie'."[26]

The reason is that Strauss was not the conventional conservative philosopher
that he appears to be; instead, he was a philosophical nihilist influenced
by Carl Schmitt, Heidegger and a particular reading of Nietzsche. For
Strauss,

...the fundamental truth of the Western philosophical
tradition is a nihilist truth: that all morality, all notions of justice,
all distinctions between good and evil are actually matters of power
and interpretation and political ideology - not metaphysical or theological
irreducibility... Consequently, in the most natural and most just
regimes, the cleverest and strongest should rule the weak, for the good
of society as a whole. [The ancient scholars guarded and concealed
this knowledge], hence their reliance on esoteric deception as a
way of protecting themselves.[27] [emphases added]

It is precisely here where the will to power has been made explicit
within philosophical thought itself; a most important point that cannot
be stressed enough, for ‘noble lies’ have made their appearance in the
context of the war on terror. It is now part of the historical record
that the case for the war on Iraq was built on false connections to
the 11 September attacks and fake evidence of weapons of mass destruction,[28]
a contradiction that will be further explored in Chapter 5.

This explains why Strauss regarded as vital the development of a new
breed of ruling intellectuals - modern "philosopher kings" - that would
project a hidden ("esoteric") truth based on simple moral precepts for
modern societies to be able to face tyranny. The elite is a necessity,
since in his view democracy

...had become little more than a vulgar and futile
attempt to create equality in a naturally unequal world... This clearly
troubled Strauss, to the extent that, among many other things, he shared
with Nietzsche the belief that ‘the history of western civilization
has led to the triumph of the inferior’. A prospect that terrified them
both.[29]

Thus, the intellectual elite needs to tell "noble lies" not only
to people but also to powerful politicians. In 2000, William Kristol
implicitly recognized this when he explained that a major teaching of
Strauss was that no political position was really based on the truth.[30]

Strauss also advocated a reawakening of "a reverence for myth and transcendental
illusion among the masses." Again, this was confirmed by a neoconservative,
Irving Kristol, who acknowledged that the neoconservatism movement had
taken up the Straussian strategy of "explicit and strong support for
religion - even if such support contradicted one's own atheism". Thus,
according to Kristol, "neoconservatives are pro-religion even though
they themselves may not be believers"; a position that has been described
as "noble hypocrisy" by Ronald Bailey.[31]

Another commentator, Shadia Drury, notes that like Marx, Strauss believed
that religion was the opium of the masses, but unlike him, Strauss believed
that masses needed opium. The Editor of the Christian Journal, Chronicles,
has put it this way, "Straussians in general believe that religion might
be a useful thing to take in the suckers with." [32]

Another form of myth that needs to be created for the sake of the unity
of the populace is that of an enemy to fight, "so that they can be reminded
of the meaningfulness and precariousness of their culture and polity."[33]
And here we see further parallels with the current discourse of the
war on terror, a ‘war’ that from a Straussian perspective is not only
waged against the external, but also against the domestic forces of
individualism, historicism and relativism.[34]

Why should we prefer this interpretation of Strauss as consciously
aware of the manipulation of society for the promotion of the elite
rather than as an idealist? Because it explains better the behaviour
of contemporary neoconservatives in power; and also because that is
how Strauss interpreted the classics himself. Jim George writes:

[I]f one reads Strauss in the way that he insists
we must read philosophical texts - sceptically and always aware of esoteric
strategies - he is very much what his detractors claim he is, a cynical
manipulator of young minds, a right wing fundamentalist seeking
to undermine liberal freedoms in the US and instigate an old world 'war
culture' at the core of US foreign policy. In this reading of Strauss,
his classically trained elite is little more than a reconstituted pre-modern
aristocracy encouraged to believe that their intellectual superiority
entitles them to rule over their fellow citizens and to use any duplicitous
means at their disposal in this process.[35]

An argument could be made for a third possible interpretation: that
Strauss did believe in the intrinsic value of ideals for the common
good, but that it faced such a threat from tyrannical forces that the
intellectual elite had no option but to make use of any means, even
those that the people would not approve of. Maybe, but if so we would
have to recognize that it would make absolutely no difference in practice.
Thus, the idealistic aspect of Straussianism would have to be dismissed.

Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom

Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz had both been students of Albert Wohlstetter,
another professor of political science at the University of Chicago
who had worked for RAND Corporation and had been a consultant for the
Pentagon. He also helped them both to get positions in Washington’s
political circles. Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, another University
of Chicago academic who also tutored Wolfowitz, were protégés of Strauss.[36]

Wohlstetter thought that arms limitation talks with the Soviets were
not a good idea, since the US would be in disadvantage by having its
technological brilliance constrained. His alternative strategy proposed
that the US should replace the traditional realist mindset of deterrence
and balance of power with a posture that allowed fighting a limited
nuclear war, a perspective that was enthusiastically endorsed by neoconservatives
like Wolfowitz.[37] Wohlstetter sought to use game theory and
statistics to construct precise scenarios of a nuclear war with the
Soviet Union. He was the godfather of the nuclear hawks, opposed all
forms of accommodating coexistence with the Soviet Union, and pushed
hard for the development of an antiballistic missile system.[38]

As for Bloom, he preached the importance of traditional values, books
and the classics, and rejected relativism. Most of his ideas were borrowed
from Strauss, who had been his teacher. Bloom dedicated his first book
to Strauss and described his first encounter with him as the "decisive
moment" in his life.[39]

James Burnham

In the 1930s, the maverick intellectual James Burnham was a leading
Trostkyite, but in 1940 he broke with Leon Trostky over the socialist
status of the Soviet Union, and by the end of World War II he was a
fierce right-wing anticommunist.

He believed that the Soviets were certain to conquer the entire world
unless the United States accepted the mission and responsibilities of
a World Empire. In his words:

The reality is that the only alternative to the communist
World Empire is an American Empire which will be, if not literally world-wide
in formal boundaries, capable of exercising decisive world control.

Burnham was sorry that the United States was too moralistic to think
about a global empire, and he worried that Americans were afraid of
Soviet power.

In 1955 he joined William F. Buckley, Jr., whom he had recruited to
the CIA, in launching National Review, the right-wing magazine.
The foreign policy conservatism of National Review of the 1970s
was shaped mostly by Burnham.

Conservatives and Ronald Reagan admired him as a leading anticommunist.
The neoconservatives were equally indebted to him, although cautious
about acknowledging it, since he was too cynical and reactionary to
be a model of good American expansionism.

Burnham developed some of the ideas of neoconservatism, for example
the determinative role of cultural elites; the primacy of ideological
conflict; the totalitarian, expansionist and conspiratorial nature of
communism; the struggle for the world; and the quest for American global
dominance. Burnham’s transition from the left to conservatism set
an example that was often followed.

While neoconservatives did not cite him, the echoes of his work were
very strong. "And when the Cold War was over, they renewed the language
of empire".[40]

Neoconservatism in Historical Perspective

Origins

Social and political difficulties forced some liberal intellectuals
to reconsider their positions by rejecting what they considered to be
excesses of radicalism and hubris from reformists. This resulted in
a split in US liberalism at the beginning of the 1970s. The parting
intellectuals confounded their colleagues on the left who accused them
of turning to the right, and at first were called "new conservatives",
changing later into "neoconservatives". [41]

The break came in large part because they saw a threat in mounting
social disorders and what they thought of wishful thinking in foreign
affairs, isolating themselves within the Democratic Party. Most of the
New York liberal community was Jewish, and so they were also disturbed
by what they saw as a sharp increase in anti-Semitism from the black
community - even when hard evidence to back up this claim was scarce.
They also believed that criticism to the 1967 war Israeli victory and
accusations of oppressing Arabs from the New Left were another form
of anti-Semitism.[42]

The leading neoconservatives - Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, and Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell, Midge Decter, Michael
Novak, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Peter Berger and others - were veterans
of the so-called vital centre of anti-Communist ideology. They rejected
détente as a failure to stand against the evils of communism,[43] argued
that the defeat in Vietnam had led the Democratic party to go soft on
national security, and endorsed Ronald Reagan because he promised to
renew efforts in the struggle with the Soviets. [44]

The Committee on the Present Danger and Team B

In March 1976, Republican and Democratic hardliners established the
Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). It was led by Richard
Allen, William Casey, Max Kampelman, Paul Nitze, Richard Perle, Norman
Podhoretz, Eugene Rostow, and Elmo Zumwalt, and it included Paul Wolfowitz,
Donald Rumsfeld, Kenneth Adelman and Richard Pipes. It supported the
Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Ronald Reagan warning that coexistence
with the Soviet Union as promoted by Henry Kissinger had dangerously
turned the United States into a weaker power than the Soviet Union.
Its purpose was to destroy détente and the Jimmy Carter administration,
and ‘sell’ the Soviet threat scenario as presented by Team B,
an alternative hard-line group of outside experts to the CIA appointed
that year by the agency’s new director, George H. W. Bush.

The thesis of both CPD and Team B was that the US must reject all ‘appeasement’
strategies, abandon arms control and engage in military build up to
overwhelm all threats in any foreseeable future.[45]

Team B consisted of three groups: one analyzed Soviet low-altitude
air defence capabilities, another studied Soviet ICBM accuracy, and
the last one focused on Soviet strategic objectives. It was the last
one, chaired by Pipes and including Wolfowitz as one of its members,
which triggered controversy, earning the name Team B exclusively. This
group believed that the Soviets had built their forces to fight and
win a nuclear war - not to deter one - by gaining a strategic superiority
that would deny the US any effective retaliatory options. This was the
chief argument in their report, issued a month after Carter won the
presidency; an argument that was promulgated as a factual imperative
by the CPD.[46]

The Reagan Administration

A sign of how much Ronald Reagan valued the work of the Committee
on the Present Danger, was the fact that no less than thirty of
its members received appointments to his administration in 1980, twenty
of them in national security posts.[47]

Reagan entered office sharing their belief that previous administrations
had neglected the nation’s defences and been too passive in the face
of Soviet expansionism.[48] Likewise, the neoconservatives believed
that they had a president who shared their view of the world, and whose
victory proved that US citizens had come to share their views of the
present danger.[49]

Jean Kirkpatrick was appointed ambassador to the UN because of her
articles published at Commentary. Elliott Abrams, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan's former assistant, was made assistant secretary of state for
international organizations. Richard Perle became assistant secretary
of Defence for international security policy, and played one of the
most skilful and influential roles among neoconservative policy-makers.
Max Kampelman, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger
remained head of the American delegation to the Madrid meeting of the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an appointment he
had received from Carter in 1980.[50]

For two years Paul Wolfowitz ran the State Department's policy planning
staff in the administration, working out the department’s long-term
goals. His staff included Francis Fukuyama, Alan Keyes, Zalmay Khalilzad,
and James Roche. Later, Wolfowitz became Assistant Secretary of State
for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.[51]

Through their declarations, neoconservatives contributed to the initial
image of Reagan in the way he was regarded outside the US. They came
rapidly to be seen, especially by outsiders, as the foreign policy specialists
of Reagan, largely because other members of the right wing were oriented
to domestic issues.[52] From her position in the UN, Kirkpatrick
consistently supported Israel in the Security Council and the General
Assembly against "an ongoing process whose goals are to delegitimize...
[Israel and] to deny it the right to self-Defence, to secure borders,
to survival." After the invasion of Grenada Kirkpatrick told the
Security Council that "the [UN] charter does not require that people
submit supinely to terror, nor that their neighbours be indifferent
to their terrorization." She applied the argument in other situations.
"We do not think it is moral to leave small countries and helpless people
defenceless against conquest by violent minorities", she said
of El Salvador in 1984. Following Kirkpatrick’s lead, Abrams portrayed
Communism as the greatest threat to human rights.[53] From their
point of view for reasons of Soviet structure and politics, the conflict
between Moscow and Washington was not susceptible of mitigation, but
had to end with the death or transformation of one or other of the two
countries.[54]

For the first three years the declarations coming from Reagan were
what the neoconservatives could have wished. Reagan asserted that Soviet
leaders were masters of an "evil empire" prepared "to commit any crime,
to lie, to cheat" in order to achieve a Communist world. In a display
of Anti-Communism, Reagan rejected détente and claimed that an expansionist
USSR "underlies all the unrest that is going on. If they weren't engaged
in this game of dominoes, there wouldn't be any hot spots in the world."
He identified the Soviets as the source of Third World disorders and
he committed the US to the active support of anti-Communist movements
around the world, such as the contras in Nicaragua and the Afghan rebels.[55]
However, Reagan’s declarations disguised the fact that his actions
by no means matched his words. This may explain in part why differences
between some neoconservatives and Reagan developed in the later years.[56]

The reason for the gap between words and actions is most probably that
anti-Communism and threat exaggeration serve as vehicles for forging
US unity at home, particularly in times of domestic crisis. Thomas G.
Patterson notes that

Given these characteristics [of creation of unity],
leaders who have developed views of a malevolent Communism that preys
upon a vulnerable world may not shift their views, even in the face
of abundant evidence that Communism is not the omnipresent force they
imagine. Because leaders work to maintain consistency in their ideas,
they will often ignore contradictions, cling to exaggerations, and become
intransigent.[57]

What is interesting about this observation are the parallels that may
be drawn with today’s neoconservative exaggerations of the threat of
global terrorism, and many others, like John Samples, have already noticed
the similarities.[58] Both ‘wars’ are reminiscent of Strauss’s idea
of the creation of simple myths to encourage social unity.

Neoconservatives who were unhappy with Reagan, such as Norman Podhoretz,
Frank Gaffney, and Michael Ledeen outflanked him to the right. From
the early years of Reagan’s presidency Podhoretz bitterly complained
that Reagan, despite his rhetoric, huge military expenditures, and appointment
of neoconservatives, capitulated to the Soviets.[59] He became progressively
more disillusioned as he realized that Reagan was not consumed with
defeating Communism but instead was acting cautiously. In Podhoretz’s
view, anything less than total victory was equivalent to defeat and
he bitterly denounced Reagan for his compromises.[60] In 1981 Irving
Kristol complained that that no new, stronger measures had taken the
place of the grain embargo imposed on the USSR after the invasion of
Afghanistan; he worried that the administration's declared commitment
to preventing a leftist revolution in El Salvador was not being matched
by actions; and that arms sales to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, respectively,
were not helping the Afghans and were a threat to Israel.

Other neoconservatives resisted the attacks, relieving Reagan of responsibility
and blaming a series of his officials for the shortcomings.[61] In spite
of Podhoretz and others, most neoconservatives retain an admiration
of Reagan nowadays, considering him the exemplar of all the virtues
they defend.[62] The Reagan legacy is clearly present in the current
Bush administration. Dick Cheney has said that "it was the vision and
the will of Ronald Reagan that gave hope to the oppressed, shamed the
oppressors and ended an evil empire,"[63] while Edwin Feulner, president
of the far-right Heritage Foundation happily described the Bush Jr.
administration as "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration".[64]

Ikenberry writes:

New fundamentalists are inspired by a particular view
of how the Cold War was won - and it is their lessons from their great
victory that guide their strategy today. [For them] It was not engagement,
detente, 'paper' agreements and mutual interest that brought the Soviet
Union down, but the Reagan administration's hard-line policy of confrontation,
military build up and ideological warfare. Reagan raised the stakes
in the struggle with the Soviet Union by boosting military spending
and putting ideological pressure on the 'evil empire'. This [flawed]
historical narrative provides the ultimate defence for hard-line fundamentalist
policies.[65] [emphasis added]

After their overall successes with Reagan, neoconservative also began
a generational transition from liberalism to mainstream conservatism,
while maintaining an identity apart from that traditional southern and
midwestern US conservatism. Younger neoconservatives and analysts influenced
like Abrams, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer began to assume
the leadership positions long held by Irving Kristol, Podhoretz, and
Kirkpatrick.[66] The second generation of neoconservatives, which also
included Alan Keys, Francis Fukuyama, Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky and
Wolfowitz, was much more explicitly indebted to Strauss.[67]

The Bush Sr. Administration and the First Gulf War

After serving as vice president with Reagan, George H. W. Bush became
president himself. Various members of his staff would later serve again
under his son’s administration in 2000. Colin Powell, for example, was
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with Bush Sr. while Dick Cheney
was secretary of Defence.[68] The latter was the only hardline Cold
Warrior in the administration’s top rank. While most of his colleagues
believed in Gorbachev, Cheney thought that the Soviet Union was still
a mortal enemy and that glasnost was a trick to disarm the United States.
He cultivated a team of hardliners in the Pentagon's policy directorate,
led by Paul Wolfowitz.

Powell, the former national security advisor with Reagan, was committed
no less than Cheney, to maintaining and strengthening America’s global
military dominance. However, unlike Cheney, he believed that the Cold
War was over, and wanted the American military to have maximum flexibility
in order to focus on regional trouble spots. For him, the US had to
be "the world’s global police force." Part of his plan included military
expenditure cuts. While Cheney and Wolfowitz did not agree with Powell
on the reduction in military spending, the three of them designed a
military policy based on responding to regional contingencies instead
of a global war with the Soviet Union. However, the presentation of
the new policy coincided with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, pushing the
plan to the background.1[69]

The Bush administration had pushed a resolution through the UN Security
Council setting a 15 January 1991 deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from
Kuwait and authorizing any member state to use "all necessary means"
after the date. Bush claimed that with the UN resolution in hand
and on the basis of his constitutional authority he could go to war
after the deadline without a formal declaration of war by the Congress,
and so the first attacks on Baghdad came on January 16.

During the six months of US deployments in the gulf, several different
justifications were given by the administration for it at different
points in time; among them, getting rid of "a mad dictator", defending
the "oil-lifeline threatened"; the protection of freedom, liberty, national
security, and jobs; the restoration of "rulers to Kuwait", and Defence
against Saddam Hussein’s "nuclear threat".[70] As we can see, the justifications
given by the son for the Second Gulf War echo the father’s. Just as
Bush Jr.’s discourse spoke of the war within the context of a global
war, the "war on terror", Bush Sr.’s had also a vision for the world.
It was with the First Gulf War that Bush Sr. began to speak of a "new
world order":

What is at stake is more than one small country, it
is a big idea - a new world order where diverse nations are drawn
together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind:
peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.[71]

And:

[The war was waged] to defend civilized values around
the world... a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the
jungle... I've had a lot of time to think about the situation in the
Middle East, I've reconciled all the moral issues. It's black versus
white, good versus evil.

In another speech he added a religious dimension by declaring that
the Gulf War coalition was "on the side of God".[72]

Charles Krauthammer took the U.S. led response to the Iraqi invasion
as a reminder that Western security still depended on Washington’s lead.
"Where the United States does not tread, the alliance does not follow,"
he wrote. He estimated that a new and major problem would be that advanced
weapons technologies would enable "relatively small, peripheral, and
backward states... to emerge rapidly as threats not only to regional
but to world security," so the U.S. would have to be prepared "to act
alone [against these threats], backed by as many of its allies as will
join". Similarly, Elliott Abrams advocated a U.S. role centred on using
its preponderance of power to enforce international norms of conduct,
much as Great Britain’s during the nineteenth century.[73]

Norman Podhoretz welcomed the Gulf War as an opportunity for the US
to ‘remoralize’ itself after the demise of the Soviet Union and the
loss of a necessary ‘foreign demon’ as a focus of national unity and
moral commitment.[74]

However, Bush’s failure to end the war with the removal of Saddam Hussein
became a regular complaint in neoconservative publications such as Commentary;
we get an insight of what they wished for the Middle East a decade before
it would materialize.[75]

Another cause of neoconservative discontent with the Bush administration
was its policies toward Israel. In 1992, the Bush administration demanded
from Tel Aviv that a $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel not
be used in the building of settlements in the occupied territories.
Jean Kirkpatrick suggested that this marked a point of departure from
traditional U.S. support for Israel. Frustrated by the Israelis as well
as their political allies in the United States, Secretary of State James
A. Baker lost his temper, "Fuck the Jews. They didn't vote for us,"
he said in a private remark which was leaked to the press. In this atmosphere,
some neoconservatives would later find Bill Clinton an attractive alternative
presidential candidate.1[76]

The 1992 Defence Planning Guidance

The document that is generally taken to be the basis for the so-called
Bush (Jr.) Doctrine guiding the post 9/11 ‘war on terror’ is the Defence
Planning Guidance (DPG) of 1992, ordered by Secretary of Defence
Dick Cheney, supervised by Pentagon Undersecretary for Policy Paul Wolfowitz
and prepared by his team. It had the input of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
Zalmay Khalilzad, Andrew Marshall, Richard Perle, Eric Edelman and Albert
Wohlstetter. The DPG was a military plan for fiscal years 1994 through
1999. It was never officially finalized, but it was leaked to the Washington
Post and the New York Times.

The strategy declared the U.S.’ right to wage preemptive wars - the
word "preempt" was actually included - to avoid attacks with weapons
of mass destruction or to punish aggressors. It called for a global
missile defence system and a "U.S.-led system for collective security".
It opposed the development of nuclear programs in other countries
while asserting the U.S.’ need to maintain a strong nuclear arsenal.
The DPG warned the United States might have to take "military steps
to prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction" in
Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, and India. It warned that allowing Japan
or South Korea to grow into regional powers would be destabilizing in
East Asia, and judged that the U.S. needed to thwart Germany’s aspirations
for leadership in Europe and restrain India’s "hegemonic aspirations"
in South Asia. In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, the overall objective
was "to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve
U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." It also cautioned that
a Russian relapse was a dangerous possibility.

In short, the US had to become so powerful militarily that no other
power or coalition of powers could any longer prevent it shaping the
world in its own image.[77]

Since the report was leaked, Bush Sr. and Cheney were forced to distance
themselves from it, but it was later published as the Regional Defence
Strategy of 1993. Its promotion of preemptive military action in
Iraq suggests that it became policy in 2002. Wolfowitz acknowledges
that he personally started worrying about Iraq in 1979.1[78]

The Clinton Administration

During the decade of the 1990s neoconservatism seemed to fade because
it was no longer in the administration. Also, it was identified with
bygone debates, and it merged to some degree with mainstream conservatism.[79]

Though for some neoconservatives Bill Clinton seemed at first a good
option to Bush, soon his administration became a disappointment, and
so they accused him of not being a true moderate Democrat but, rather,
a left winger disguising himself to win the election.

In foreign affairs, neoconservatives began attacking the president
in the Spring of 1993, criticizing his apparent acquiescence in the
stagnation of multilateralism and his unwillingness to use military
force. The Kosovo experience led the neoconservatives to conclude that
the NATO alliance was more a hindrance than a help. They focused on
Clinton’s failure to rescue the Bosnians. His indecision led the neoconservatives
to worry that foreign governments might perceive the U.S. as turning
isolationist and weakening militarily.[80]

The editors of the New Republic were also unhappy for Clinton’s
softness toward Saddam Hussein: they thought the president had an "obsession"
with U.N. requirements and "legalism". Paul Wolfowitz stressed that
the real questions facing U.S. foreign policy were not being addressed,
such as future threats from "‘backlash states’ like North Korea, Iraq
and Iran...".[81] With mounting anger he fixated on Iraq in the mid-1990s,
fuelling a campaign to rectify the unfinished business. He warned that
Saddam was too dangerous to be contained, because with his stockpile
of biological weapons "he could kill the entire population of the world".
In 1997 Wolfowitz and Khalilzad demanded Saddam’s overthrow by the US
and its Iraqi allies. They wrote: "If we are serious about dismantling
Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and preventing him from building
more, we will have to confront him sooner or later - and sooner would
be better."[82]

The disappointment and aspirations of neoconservatism were expressed
by William Kristol, who wrote that conservatism ought to emphasize both
personal and national responsibility, relish the opportunity for national
engagement, embrace the possibility of national greatness, and restore
a sense of the heroic, which has been sorely lacking in American foreign
policy - and American conservatism - in recent years.

The revival of the heroic required a "remoralization of American foreign
policy" that recognized that the principles of the Declaration of Independence
were "universal, enduring, ‘self evident’ truths."[83]

The Project for the New American Century

William Kristol and Robert Kagan founded the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC) in 1997, an indication that neoconservatism
had completed a generational transition. Kagan, Kristol, Muravchik,
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and others had assumed leadership roles
that had been held by Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, and Norman Podhoretz. The terms of their debate shifted
replacing the Soviet threat with a broad idea of "American global leadership"
and an intent above all else on waging a second Gulf-War.

The members of the PNAC had strong links to the national security bureaucracy,
the Defence establishment, the print and cable media industry, dominant
sections of the U.S. Defence industry, and some of America’s wealthiest
conservative foundations. A large portion of the signatories, such as
Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, Bennett, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, Aaron
Friedberg, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, Zalmay Khalilzad, Jean Kirkpatrick,
Dan Quayle, Peter Rodman, Henry Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz
had served in the Reagan and Bush senior administrations. Others had
worked for the CIA, such as Reuel Marc Gerecht and James Woolsey, the
agency’s director from 1993 to 1995. Among the intellectual members
were Francis Fukuyama, Donald Kagan, Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Also
in the PNAC were Jeb Bush, brother of the current president,
and Perle.

In February 1998 Wolfowitz told the House International Relations Committee
that regime change in Iraq was the "only way to rescue the region and
the world from the threat that will continue to be posed by Saddam’s
unrelenting effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction..." That month
an open letter was sent to the White House suggesting a strategy for
bringing down the Iraqi regime, and another one in May with a similar
message was addressed to the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority
Leader.

Among the signatories of the letter to Clinton were Abrams, Richard
Armitage, John R. Bolton, Douglas Feith, Khalilzad, Perle, Peter Rodman,
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, David Wurmser and Dov Zakheim, Graffney, Kagan,
Kristol, Muravchik, Martin Peretz, and Leon Wieseltier. They called
themselves the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf.[84]
Of the 18 people who signed the PNAC letter to Clinton, eleven became
part of the Bush administration.1[85]

The PNAC is not the only influential neoconservative organization.
The American Enterprise Institute, for example, sits on the three
floors above the headquarters of the PNAC in Washington, and has a tradition
of extensive associations with the top levels of government. AEI’s interaction
with government circles has included George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford,
and ex Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir. Kirkpatrick, Ledeen, Muravchik,
Perle Wattenberg, and Wurmser are all members.

In the financial network organizations such as the Lynde and Harry
Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation,
the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Castle Rock Foundation all provide
the money for research institutions such as AEI, the Heritage Foundation,
and the Hoover Institute - the latter includes Rumsfeld and Condoleezza
Rice among its alumni, and several of the institute’s fellows sit on
the Defence Policy Board.[86]

The Rise of the Bush Jr. Administration and the Bush Doctrine

When George W. Bush came to power in 2000 an alliance between the two
generations of neoconservatives was evident.[87] For weeks, while the
2000 election verdict was being decided between the Florida Supreme
Court and the US Supreme Court, the Weekly Standard fiercely
contended that Bush should be president. Meanwhile, the neoconservatives
got very good appointments, thanks to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.[88]
John P. Burke reported that planning for the Bush administration commenced
a year and a half before a possible inauguration and that the Bush team,
particularly Karl Rove, drew on the experiences of the 1980 Reagan transition.[89]

In the Bush administration we find:

Dick Cheney, Vice President; Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff until his
resignation in late 2005; Eric Edelman, Foreign Policy Advisor; Donald
Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence; Paul Wolfowitz, Assitant Secretary of
Defence until his departure and appointment as head of the World Bank;
Doug Feith, Under-Secretary of Defence (Policy); Steven Hadley, Deputy
to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and later Secretary of
State replacing Collin Powell; John Bolton, Under Secretary of State
for Arms Control and now ambassador to the UN; Richard Perle, Chairman
of the Defence Advisory Board, until his resignation in March 2003;
Zalmay Khalilizad, special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq; an Paul Kozemcheak,
Defence Department in charge of ‘radical innovation’ in Defence planning.
Others connected to these individuals in the administration include
Abram Shulsky, Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans; and
Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary of Defence (Intelligence). Both are
at the centre of the concern about bogus intelligence on the Iraq war,[90]
examined in more detail in Chapter 5.

The so-called ‘Bush Doctrine’ which emerged clearly after 9/11 resonates
with neoconservative perspectives, almost word for word. It is
characterized by its support for the use of overwhelming force in the
face of threat, even if potential. Pre-emption is an official strategic
policy. There is an inclination towards unilateralism, hostile attitudes
towards global liberalism and its multilateral institutions, and an
ideological representation of U.S.’ exceptionalism. The doctrine also
includes the idea that this is an opportune time to transform international
politics and that peace and stability require the U.S. to assert its
primacy in world politics.[91] The National Security Strategy of the
US elaborates the doctrine by endorsing the idea of spreading freedom,
democracy and free enterprise throughout the world.[92]

Clearly, both Kagan and Kristol’s book, Present Dangers: Crisis
and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defence Policy of 2000,1[93]
and the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance were the blueprints of
the Bush Doctrine.[94] Since they had been thinking about a strategy
for years, September 11 found the neoconservatives well prepared, with
their response in place and targets fixed.[95]

In the eight months after the terrorist attacks, the already huge US
defence budget received a 14 per cent increase,1[96] a sign that the
military would be having a primary role, confirmed by the wars in Afghanistan
and in Iraq. These invasions are but the most visible effects of the
Bush Doctrine so far, but the consequences have been profound in many
other respects, some of which will be covered in further chapters.

The Israeli Lobby

What is called the U.S. Israeli "lobby" is not just the Jewish community,
but also the major segments of liberal opinion, the leadership of the
labour unions, religious fundamentalists, conservatives, and cold war
warriors[97] which strongly support Israel. The Israeli lobby happens
to be closely connected to neoconservatism. Though there is no reason
why neoconservatism should be linked to hardline Zionism, in fact it
often is, mingling the neoconservative and Israeli lobby networks and
making them sometimes indistinguishable from each other. Gary Dorrien
writes:

Most unipolarist leaders were Jewish neoconservatives
who took for granted that a militantly pro-Israel policy was in America’s
interest. Wolfowitz, Perle, Podhoretz, Krauthammer, Wattenberg, Muravchik,
both Kristols, Kagan, Boot, and Kaplan fit the description, as did dozens
of neocons at all levels of the Bush administration from the Pentagon
desk officers to State Department deputy secretaries and advisors in
the vice president’s office.

Some of these were members of the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA), founded in 1976, which took a very hard
line against the Palestinians and US diplomatic relations with Syria.
According to Dorrien, JINSA has sometimes outflanked Israel’s Likud
Party to the right.

JINSA’s board of advisors before 2001 included Richard Perle, James
Woolsey, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, and Douglas Feith, until the last
moved into the Bush administration. JINSA gave a voice to those who
wanted to see the US continue to provide Israel with ample support in
case of another war in the Middle East. The Institute is now committed
to argue in favour of the link between US National security and Israel’s
security, as well as strengthening both. Since the 1970s, JINSA
has grown to a highly connected and well-funded $1.4-million-a-year
operation, much of which goes toward facilitating contact between Israeli
officials and retired U.S. generals and admirals with influence in Washington.
Indeed, one of the military figures connected to JINSA was Jay Garner,
the Bush administration’s first choice for the reconstruction of Iraq,
and one of the signatories of the U.S. Admirals’ and Generals’ Statement
on Palestinian Violence, which stated: "We are appalled by the Palestinian
political and military leadership that teaches children the mechanics
of war while filling their heads with hate."

JINSA overlaps considerably with the Centre for Security Policy (CSP),
another hardline Zionist organization. Both are underwritten largely
by Irving Moskowitz, and their membership lists are interchangeable.
The CSP is directed by Frank Gaffney, a Perle protégé, and it promotes
wars for regime changes throughout the Middle East while stridently
defending Israel’s settlements policy.[98]

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), founded
in the 1950s and with a 100,000 members across the U.S., is mostly concerned
about ensuring that Israel is strong enough to meet its security challenges.
Its website boasts that publications such as The New York Times
and Fortune have described it as one of the most powerful interest
groups and the most important organization affecting the U.S.’ relationship
with Israel. It helps pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives
through meetings with members of Congress.[99]

AIPAC might be involved in a case of espionage. The FBI is investigating
Lawrence Franklin, an analyst specializing in Iran who worked with former
under secretary of defence for policy Douglas Feith, for passing classified
information to AIPAC. The FBI has been investigating AIPAC for about
four years.[100]

That is not the only case of neoconservatism demonstrating more
loyalty to Israel than the U.S. Perle, who functions as a link across
many of the neoconservative think tanks, research institutions, and
other organizations on the network,[101] was, according to researcher
Stephen Green, caught by the FBI in 1970 discussing classified information
with an Israeli Embassy official. Wolfowitz was also investigated in
1978 for providing a classified document to an Israeli official via
an AIPAC staffer on the proposed sale of a US weapons system to an Arab
government.[102]

Other institutes lobbying for Israel include the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum.[103]

The loyalty of the neoconservative Jews seems to be exclusively related
to the Likud Party and the extreme right of Israeli politics.[104] One
of the most outstanding events to come out of this relationship was
the 1996 research paper published by the Israeli think tank the Institute
for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, A Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It was a policy guideline
for Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu which argued that Netanyahu’s
"new set of ideas" provided an opportunity "to make a clean break" with
the afflicted Oslo peace process. The paper criticized the "land for
peace" initiative and emphasized: "Our claim to the land - to which
we have clung for hope for 2000 years - is legitimate and noble."
The "clean break" also meant re-establishing "the principle of preemption".
The study group that contributed to the report included JINSA member
James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Feith, Perle, Jr., David Wurmser,
and his wife Meyrav Wurmser.[105] The document also called for the use
of proxy armies to destabilize and overthrow Arab governments. It advocated
Israeli attacks on Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and, if necessary,
Syria. Since Iraq was an enemy of Israel, it asked Netanyahu to support
Jordanian Hashemites in their challenges to Iraq’s borders.

Perle, Feith and Wurmser told Netanyahu, with whom they had close personal
ties, that the U.S. would support a hard line against the Palestinians
and a policy of "hot pursuit into Palestinian-controlled areas." More
important, Israel was under no obligation to honour the Oslo agreements
if the Palestine Liberation Organization did not fulfil its obligations
of compliance and accountability. The time had come to find alternatives
to Arafat and Israel’s dependence on the United States, they urged.[106]

No doubt that Netanyahu paid good attention to the words of neoconservatives,
since shortly after the 9/11 attacks he implored the United States to
smash Iraq, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian resistance.
Neoconservatives added Syria, North Korea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya,
Sudan and Algeria.[107]

Bush’s announcement on 14 March 2003 of support for the road map for
the peace in Palestine set off the alarms among neoconservatives and
the Israeli government. The issue was Bush’s degree of seriousness to
promote the road map and the State Department’s suggestion of the creation
of a Palestinian state by 2005.

On several occasions Bush signalled that he was not serious, suggesting
that the plan could be amended later. As for the State Department of
Colin Powell’s critical stance towards the barrier separating Israel
from the West Bank, the supporters of Israel won the match. Though Powell
complained about Israel’s repression on Palestine and Bush asked Ariel
Sharon to build the security barrier as close as possible to the Green
Line, on October 1 2003 Sharon resolved to cut deeply into the West
Bank to protect the settlements, vowing to retain the major ones while
withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. The Bush administration approved the
decision and disavowed the Palestinian right of return. Though
Sharon claimed to accept the goal of a two-state solution, its policy
sabotaged the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.[108]

This should serve as example of the effects of the work of the Israeli
lobby.

Other Power Relations: Oil, Media and Religion

Oil

It is a common belief among critiques of the war on Iraq that the real
reasons for the invasion had nothing to do with the threat posed by
Saddam Hussein but with the desire to control Middle Eastern oil. Since
it has been fairly determined that a great part of, if not all, the
case for war was based on fabrications, as Chapter 5 will detail, it
is sensible to assume that economics played a role. I do not believe,
however, that the importance of oil is in itself sufficient to explain
the war or any of the other effects of the war on terror for the matter.
While it should definitely not be ignored, it is just one network of
power relations among many, and not necessarily the one most directly
related.

That the importance that the Bush administration and its neoconservative
advisers attribute to Persian Gulf oil can be traced back to 1976, when
Paul Wolfowitz, working as the deputy assistant secretary of defence
for regional programmes in the Carter administration, wrote the Limited
Contingency Study, the first extensive examination of the need for
the U.S. to defend the Persian Gulf. The document began:

We and our major industrialized allies have a vital
and growing stake in the Persian Gulf region because of our need for
Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli
conflict… The importance of Persian Gulf Oil cannot be easily exaggerated.

If the Soviet Union were to control Persian Gulf oil, Wolfowitz warned,
NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance would probably be destroyed "without
recourse to war by the Soviets".

The study also addressed the possible threat of Iraq to Western interests.
The solution:

...we must not only be able to defend the interests
of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and ourselves against an Iraqi invasion or show
of force, we should also make manifest our capabilities and commitments
to balance Iraq’s power - and this may require an increased visibility
for U.S. power.[109]

The personal careers of some of the members of the Bush administration
also suggest that the issue of oil was carefully taken into consideration.
The Secretary of Commerce, Don Evans, is the former chairman of Tom
Brown, an independent oil and gas position that exploits natural gas
in the Rocky Mountains. Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive
of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil field service company. And George
W. Bush himself owned a small oil company, Arbusto. That his experience
shaped his decisions to some degree is revealed by his own words: "I
lived the energy industry. I understand its ups and downs. I also know
its strategic importance to the United States of America. Access to
energy is a mainstay of our national security".[110]

The assumption that oil was one of the main reasons for war on Iraq
is reinforced by Crude Designs: The rip-off of Iraq's oil wealth,
a 2005 report authored by Greg Muttitt, from the London-based charity
PLATFORM, and backed by U.S. and British pressure groups such as War
on Want, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), Global Policy
Forum and Institute for Policy Studies. It claims that Iraq
may lose up to $194bn (£113bn) of oil wealth if a U.S.-inspired plan
to hand over development of its oil reserves to US and British multinationals
comes into force in 2006. The report says the new Iraqi constitution
opened the way for greater foreign investment and that negotiations
with oil companies, such as the Anglo-Dutch Shell group, were already
under way ahead of the December 2005 election and before legislation
was passed. The authors claimed to have details of high-level pressure
from the US and UK governments on Iraq to look to foreign companies
to rebuild its oil industry. The report added that the use of production
sharing agreements (PSAs) was proposed by the US State Department even
before the invasion and adopted by the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Earlier in 2005 a BBC Newsnight report claimed to have uncovered
documents showing the Bush administration made plans to secure Iraqi
oil even before 9/11.[111]

Media

The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, New York
Post, American Spectator, National Review, New
York Sun, Weekly Standard, Clear Channel radio and the Fox
News Channel are among the publications and electronic media that ensure
that conservatives have a place among the mass media. The latter two
are owned by media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch’s strong personal and business attachments with Israel have
received recognition in the United States. The American Jewish Congress
of New York voted him "Communications Man of the Year" in 1982.
Actually, his position on Israel has been strong enough to force correspondents
to resign when their stories did not conform to the approved line. Naturally,
he has provided a voice in the media for neoconservatism and like-minded
groups since the 1990s, when his empire grew to include broadcasting
networks and channels, with coverage of 40 percent of US TV households,
more than 130 newspapers, around 25 magazines and publishing companies.[112]

Religion

Since the discourse of neoconservatism portrays world politics as a
struggle of good versus evil, an image that grew with the events of
9/11, it found support and common ground among domestic Christian conservative
groups. Commentators such as Jerry Falwell and Christian Broadcasting
Network President Pat Robertson offered similarly apocalyptic accounts
of events.[113] This does not mean that neoconservatives actually
share their beliefs. But it is certain that as a Straussian strategy,
they have found an alliance of the extremism of this brand of Christianism
convenient.

‘Extremism’ may well be an accurate description of some of these Christian
conservatives. An illuminating example of their thinking is offered
by Robertson’s comments of August 2005 on Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez. Chavez, he said, was a "terrific danger" to the U.S. because
he would make Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration
and Muslim extremism." The solution:

You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination,
but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really
ought to go ahead and do it. … It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting
a war ... and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. … We have
the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise
that ability. …We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid
of one, you know, strong-arm dictator... It’s a whole lot easier to
have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.[114]

Robertson has also supported the Israeli settlements movement and denounced
peace negotiations with the Palestinians. The basis for his position
is the Bible’s geography of the promised land and, mostly, the belief
according to which the gathering of Jews in modern Israel was a prelude
to Christ’s second coming at which time Jews would be converted to Christianity
or condemned to hell.[115]

This interpretation of the significance of the state of Israel as the
site for the second coming of Christ is shared by Christian right groups
such as Empower America, founded by PNAC co-signatory William
Bennett and Jack Kemp in 1999, and the Foundation for the Defence
of Democracy (FDOD), resulting in their support to the neoconservative
agenda and Israel’s Likud Party. Ralph Reed joined together with Rabbi
Yechiel Eckstein to found Stand for Israel, with the purpose
of generating political support among the Christian community for Israel
and later the war on terror. The group was created out of the International
Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), which has been central
in the promotion of the relationship between evangelical Christians
and U.S. Jews since 1983.

In return, neoconservative figures such as National Security Council
official Elliott Abrams, also helped to promote the links between Washington’s
neoconservatives and Christian evangelicals, sometimes advocating for
issues of importance to religious groups such as sex trafficking and
AIDS.[116] Furthermore, the goal of George W. Bush’s Faith-Based
Initiative is to enable partnerships between faith-based organizations
and the government in the delivery of social services, making them eligible
to compete for grants. Once with federal funding, they would be able
to consider a person’s religion when hiring staff, which constitutes
discrimination in hiring on the basis of religion, and to use federal
funds to build or maintain structures that could be used for religious
purposes. Not all of Congress would pass Bush’s legislation, so the
President used executive orders and rule changes to get what he wanted
for the benefit of his religious supporters.[117]

The agenda of the Christian right has also found a place in the Republican
Party. In the March 2004 Texas conventions the delegates agreed, among
other things, to the idea that homosexuality should be repealed, that
Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank and should
do whatever it wishes in order to eliminate terrorism. Arab states,
on the other hand, should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine.[118]

A survey conducted after 9/11 shows how closely linked are the ideas
of the Christian right to the war on terror. When asked to name the
most important reasons for the support of Israel, 56 percent of evangelical
Christians referred to its alliance with U.S. against terrorism. Even
neoconservative Daniel Pipes recognized as much in July 2003:

"To those who wonder why Washington follows policies
so different from the European states, a large part of the answer these
days has to do with the clout of Christian Zionists."[119]

Another poll from April 2004 discovered that among U.S. citizens who
go to church at least once a week, 56% agreed that the "situation in
Iraq was worth going to war over." Less than 45% of those who seldom
attend church thought so.

Consider the political importance of these relationships since at least
one in five U.S. citizens identify themselves as Evangelicals.[120]

Conclusion

The examination of the power relations behind the current U.S. discourse
on terrorism shows that the most important and influential group has
been that of neoconservatives, having their ideas and goals clearly
established many years before 9/11. These people serve, among other
functions, as a link between the Israeli lobby, with which they often
overlap, the U.S. government and academia, and so they are in a privileged
position of power. The other groups that have been identified also play
important roles, however they are often only complementary ones.

NOTES:

[1] James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, The History of the Bush's War
Cabinet, Penguin Books, USA, 2004, p. ix-xi

[120] John Samples, The Rise and Fall of conservative Reform in the
United States, p. 101

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